Having lived and having relatives in both north and south, I agree; it's a north-south thing. There are advantages and disadvantages to both ways. The northern candor can keep the air cleared and help people grow, but too much bluntness can damage people's feelings who work together or have to be in the same family. The southern way can keep relations smooth and encourage stable communities, but at times it can be untrustworthy, such as the smile to someone's face and the slice-up behind the back; worse, it can be quite damaging to the inner self of the person who denies outrages and offenses in order to appear polite.
In Code Pink's case, there is no parallel whatsoever to sparing the feelings of one's mother. Hopefully, your mother is not dedicated to your community's defeat, demoralization, overthrow and submission, as are the Code Pinks.
Code Pink's leaders are paid Communist or Green Party agitators who have brazenly lowered the tone of politics throughout the Bush administration, such as their frequent disruptions of solemn events like the Inaugural, various meetings in the Capital (like the one the other day with the Iraqi head of state), the State of the Union Address, press conferences with the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense -- you name it. They support the politics of political indoctrination in schools to make them "safe" for "gay kids", but they have made the city of Washington an unsafe place for the elected officials on whom the nation depends for its safety to live in, by holding demonstrations at the official's personal residences.
They are hardened operatives who use naive lefties nostalgic for the 60s as human shields -- even rounding up people from homeless shelters to populate their agitprop activities. Their phony demonstrations are not about the war, they are about disrupting the free-market democratic republican system and replacing it with totalitarian socialism.
Trust me, their leaders richly deserve the heat. And the mindless tools who can't take it just may become discouraged from coming back to aim their indecency at our wounded soldiers and their families -- and then claim to "support the troops." As we say in the Border States, that's b******t! Should we respond, "Why, bless your heart, I don't smell a thing!"?
Here's one of them now, in the middle with the white shirt, two weeks back, when he realized the person taking his picture was a wounded soldier (Elijah Allen) from Walter Reed:
